Comment 6 for bug 290156

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Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

Often these issues occur due to issues with the monitor's EDID. EDID issues are monitor-specific, so that can account for why swapping monitors seems to make the issue go away.

An Xorg.0.log from booting with that monitor *should* display the EDID. Another tool for getting the EDID is available in the read-edid package. `get-edid | parse-edid`, but I'm not sure if you can run that if the monitor isn't working in the first place...

However, these sorts of EDID bugs *shouldn't* appear from a hardy->intrepid upgrade, so the fact that it did suggests that something deeper's at work. Even so, looking at the EDID may be of use.

The xrandr command line tool can also be used to add/remove modelines and examine the running X server. What I'd do is ssh into the box from another system, boot X until you get to the invalid mode situation, and poke at it with xrandr to try to get a functioning modeline. See man xrandr for documentation on this.

Perhaps with an Xorg.0.log from the failed case I can give some more specific advice, and investigate if there's any quirks, or changes in the xserver that could account for this issue.